The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

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Do green buildings matter to you? This podcast fuels your fire with inspiring interviews from industry and nonprofit leaders across the built environment. Not sure if green building matters? Listen to the personal stories of our guests and let Charlie's passion help convince you why green buildings are essential to our shared future. Each episode illustrates a unique journey through sustainability and towards resilience. Charlie explores the challenges and celebrations of the movers and shakers in the green building industry. Hear behind the scene stories from the inner world of green and healthy building design, construction, and management.

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November 4, 2026Episode 45730 min

Good Stewards, Big Footprints: Helping Corporate Clients Go Green with Steven Jones

💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Almost every certified project at Steven Jones's firm lands at LEED Gold or higher, including three Platinum buildings on Walmart's home office campus. His real secret is the work that never gets a plaque: a "sensibly green" approach where any project could be certified, whether or not the client pays for the paperwork. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Steven Jones is an Architect at MBL Architecture in Northwest Arkansas. The firm designs corporate campuses, offices, fire stations, and community buildings, and has helped master-plan Walmart's home office. He grew up in Springdale in a 1970s passive solar house designed by local architect James Lambeth. Its south-facing glass wall, which soaked up heat by day and released it at night, shaped how he still designs. Steven studied architecture at the University of Arkansas, home of the Fay Jones tradition of organic architecture. He later earned an MS in Advanced Architectural Design from Washington University in St. Louis. He became a LEED AP in 2008, when his firm sent him to Chicago to prepare for the exam, and he has led its Green Building work ever since. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Steven Jones shows how a regional firm made high-performance design its default setting, plaque or no plaque. Key Insight #1: "Sensibly green" beats all-or-nothing. The Challenge: Plenty of clients want to be seen as good stewards but balk at the cost and paperwork of full LEED documentation. The Solution: MBL's "sensibly green" approach, a name coined by one of its clients, keeps the strategies that make financial sense and drops the paperwork. For JB Hunt, a trucking company with a large carbon footprint, the firm designed facilities to LEED criteria and installed exhibits explaining the heat island strategies, recycled content, and reused site materials. ROI: Clients get real performance and a story they can market to customers and employees. As Steven puts it, any project MBL designs "could be LEED certified." Key Insight #2: Make Gold the floor, not the goal. The Challenge: When the requirement is Silver, it's tempting to design to Silver. The Solution: Bake the basics into every project: siting, sun orientation, ample daylight and views, and durable materials written into the specs so they don't need replacing soon. ROI: Every MBL project but one has certified at Gold or higher. The exception met the University of Arkansas's Silver minimum, and three buildings on Walmart's home office campus are Platinum. Campus-scale master planning helped make those Platinum ratings possible. Key Insight #3: Re-skin the "disposable" building. The Challenge: Pre-engineered metal buildings are often treated as disposable once they're 20–30 years old, and their embodied carbon ends up in a landfill. The Solution: On a project now under construction, MBL is keeping a 25-year-old metal building's structure and slab. The team is re-skinning it with better insulation, a tighter envelope, a new roof, and more natural light. ROI: It cost considerably less up front and avoided new structural materials. Steven admits the team hasn't run a life cycle analysis on it yet. That's the next frontier, as carbon reporting moves toward the permit counter. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "The details make the whole. Whether it's sustainability or the specific materials, that's what makes the architecture meaningful." – Steven Jones 📚Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Review a current project against the LEED scorecard, even if it isn't pursuing certification. Note which credits you're already earning by default. This Quarter: Write your baseline (orientation, daylight and views, durable materials) into your office master spec, so "sensibly green" happens on every job, not just the certified ones. This Year: Before recommending demolition, run an adaptive reuse study and a whole-building life cycle analysis on at least one existing building. Get ahead of total-carbon permitting before it arrives. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Steven Jones: Website: https://www.mbl-arch.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-jones-a66893a/ 🧩 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💟 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques: Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

October 28, 2026Episode 45634 min

From Forest to Future: How Sustainable Wood Can Transform Green Building | Oscar Crespo Pinillos

The Green Impact Report Quick take: Every cubic meter of Garnica plywood locks away about 500 kg of CO2, and the mills behind it run on 100% renewable electricity. ESG officer Oscar Crespo Pinillos explains why the hardest remaining emissions sit in the glue, and why architects should be asking manufacturers for more proof, not less. Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Oscar Crespo Pinillos is the ESG Officer at Garnica, the Spanish plywood maker headquartered in La Rioja. Its panels are made from sustainably grown European poplar and sold in more than 40 countries. He grew up in the same region, where his grandfather, a forest ranger, sold logs to Garnica when it was a small sawmill nearly a century ago. Oscar studied in Spain and Finland and finished his forestry engineering degree in Maine. He went on to earn a master's from the Yale School of Forestry on a full scholarship. Before joining Garnica over eight years ago, he worked in biodiversity conservation, forestry consulting, and poplar plantation management. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Oscar Crespo Pinillos makes the case for the oldest carbon-capture tech on the planet: the tree. Key Insight #1: Plywood that stores more carbon than it emits. The Challenge: Many building materials come with a heavy carbon bill and a lot of greenwashing. Some products gain market share by claiming to be "less unsustainable" than the alternatives. The Solution: Garnica makes its plywood from European poplar grown by small forest owners. Its mills run on 100% renewable electricity and close to 100% renewable heat, with the heat coming from biomass left over from production. ROI: Each cubic meter of plywood stores about 500 kg of CO2. As Oscar puts it, we're good at engineering and AI, "but we cannot really beat trees at this." Key Insight #2: Once the energy is clean, the carbon is in the glue. The Challenge: Garnica cut its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by about 80% against its 2019 baseline. What's left is mostly Scope 3, and most of that comes from the fossil-based resins that bind the veneer layers. The Solution: Bio-based binders. Garnica's Natu1 product swaps fossil-derived chemicals for bio-based glues, aiming for an engineered panel that's as close to 100% bio-based as possible. More R&D is underway. ROI: Greener glue makes the whole panel greener. It goes after the emissions that renewable power alone can't reach. Key Insight #3: The documentation exists. Nobody's asking for it. The Challenge: Garnica has published EPDs for years, tracked Scope 1 and 2 for more than a decade, and added Scope 3 recently. But demand for the data fades as products move through the supply chain. Architects care, and the steps in between often don't. The Solution: Specifiers and buyers should ask for EPDs, sourcing details, and carbon data at every step. They should also insist on trustworthy origins in a global market where some competitors face deforestation or forced-labor risks. ROI: Asking rewards the manufacturers doing the work and pushes the whole supply chain to move faster. It also gives your project data it can defend. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "Our products are carbon positive. They capture more carbon than is released into the atmosphere."" – Oscar Crespo Pinillos 📆 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pick one wood product on a current spec, such as plywood, casework, or millwork. Ask the manufacturer for its EPD and sourcing documentation. This Quarter: Add a request for EPDs and chain-of-custody documentation to your standard spec or procurement checklist. Make it a habit, not a one-off. This Year: Go after the Scope 3 hotspots in your material choices, such as the binders, resins, and finishes. Then follow Oscar's advice and become the go-to expert on one material or sector. 🫶 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Oscar Crespo Pinillos: Website: https://www.garnica.one/en-uk/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-c-9b64abb2/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

October 21, 2026Episode 45534 min

Turning Ceiling Tiles Into Thermal Batteries: Mick Dunn on the Future of Buildings

The Green Impact Report Quick take: We've spent two decades pulling concrete out of buildings to cut carbon, and quietly lost the thermal mass that kept rooms comfortable. Mick Dunn's fix rides in on something every project already installs: the ceiling tile. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Mick Dunn is the Product Manager for Energy Saving Ceilings at Armstrong World Industries, where he brings phase change materials into everyday buildings. A Melbourne native, he studied construction management at RMIT, came to the US on an exchange at the University of Florida, and stayed. He spent his early career in commercial construction in Maine, then ran his own companies for 15+ years, first in commercial solar thermal and then developing phase change materials. One of those products started in his garage and is now scaled by Armstrong. His 20+ years sit right where advanced thermal storage meets real-world job sites. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Mick Dunn rethinks the most overlooked surface in the building: the one over your head. Key Insight #1: The ceiling becomes a thermal battery. The Challenge: Ceilings are bought for looks and acoustics. When it comes to energy, they're dead space. The Solution: Armstrong's Templok puts a quarter-inch gelled-salt phase change layer on the back of standard ceiling tiles. Mick calls it "ice packs in your ceiling." As the room warms, the material melts at room temperature, absorbs the heat, and lets it go later. ROI: Peak room temperatures drop 2–3°F with no change to how the ceiling looks. Install is the same crew, ladders, and trucks, so the storage gets "a free ride." Key Insight #2: Put back the mass we stripped out. The Challenge: Lightweight, prefab, low-concrete construction cuts embodied carbon. It also strips out the thermal mass that used to steady indoor temperatures. The Solution: Phase change material adds thermal mass without the weight. Because drop ceilings are easy to reach, it also retrofits into existing buildings with known comfort problems. ROI: Owners get "a new dial they can turn" on problem buildings. It eases peak HVAC loads, helps with peak shaving, and makes occupants more comfortable without replacing equipment. Key Insight #3: Your ceiling can qualify for a federal tax credit. The Challenge: Upgrades like this lose at the budget table because they look like a pure added cost. The Solution: Thermal storage is eligible for the federal investment tax credit, just like battery storage and ground-source heat pumps. ROI: Planned well, Mick says, the ceiling can end up costing less than a standard one. That's alongside Armstrong's Declare labels, EPDs, HPDs, ceiling take-back program, and its new lowest-embodied-carbon tile. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "The chief goal of a building should be for it to be sustainable to live in, heal in, and work in." – Mick Dunn 💚 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: List the buildings in your portfolio with the most comfort complaints, especially ones already due for a ceiling refresh. Those are your pilot candidates. This Quarter: Ask your tax advisor or incentives consultant whether ceiling-integrated thermal storage qualifies for the federal ITC on an upcoming project. Run the numbers before the ceiling spec is locked. This Year: Make thermal storage, acoustics, and thermal comfort part of your master spec and decarbonization roadmap. Then join your local USGBC chapter, as Mick did, to find the people already solving these problems. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Mick Dunn: Website: Armstrong World Industries, Inc. (AWI) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mick-dunn-62a19218/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

October 14, 2026Episode 45431 min

How Nanotech Materials Can Support Net Zero Buildings with Nathan Kegel

The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if a coating 1 millimeter thick could insulate like a thick layer of conventional material, and you could prove it without waiting a year on a pilot? Nathan Kegel spent 20-plus years in energy modelling. Now he's at a materials science startup, building the simulation engine that tests its products before they ever reach a roof. Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Nathan Kegel leads energy services at Nanotech Materials. He grew up outside Green Bay, Wisconsin, working on a neighbor's sweet corn farm (and he's still a Packers fan). He studied at the University of Minnesota and started out designing HVAC and plumbing systems. He soon moved into energy simulation, the part of the job he found more interesting. Over about 20 years he worked on some of the early net zero and LEED Platinum lab projects in California and built building performance teams at architecture and engineering firms. He also spent roughly a decade, on and off, at IES, helping bring advanced building simulation software to North America. He's based in the Twin Cities and reads philosophy and the classics for fun. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Nathan Kegel rethinks how we insulate buildings and how we prove that new materials work: Key Insight #1: Insulation doesn't have to mean thickness The Challenge: The industry rates insulation by R-value, and thickness is part of that calculation. More resistance has meant more material, more depth and more weight. Nathan half-jokes that R-value is "the bane of my existence." The Solution: Nanotech Materials puts a silica-based particle into coatings like acrylics and epoxies. Nathan says the particle has a K-value (thermal conductivity) on par with aerogel, without aerogel's brittleness. Applied about 1 millimeter thick on a roof, the coating can essentially stop heat conduction through it. ROI: According to Nathan, the roof product is rated for Florida's 200 mph impact standard. A related spray-on coating, developed with the state of California, protects timber from wildfire and resists heat up to 1,800°C with very low smoke. You get thermal performance and resilience from one thin layer. Key Insight #2: Stop running endless pilots The Challenge: A startup can't coat a roof and wait a year to see if it worked. As Nathan puts it, "you might not be in business a year." Slow field pilots stall innovation across the industry. The Solution: One of Nanotech's co-founders built a new physics engine from scratch rather than relying on older simulation code. It has been validated under ASHRAE Standard 140. Nathan is bringing it to market, starting with services and eventually opening the full platform to project teams. ROI: Validated simulation means faster, more confident decisions about new materials. Teams can predict performance instead of waiting for it. Key Insight #3: Coat the pipe instead of jacketing it The Challenge: Traditional pipe insulation needs aluminum-jacketed systems that take a lot of labor to install. Moisture can also get trapped between the insulation and the pipe, which causes corrosion under insulation (CUI). The Solution: A coating a couple of millimeters thick, adhered directly to the metal, stops heat transfer without the jacket. ROI: Nathan says this greatly reduces labor costs and nearly prevents corrosion under insulation, so the system costs less upfront and lasts longer. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "If you really want to make the world a better place, define what that better place looks like and then work toward it, and you will be rewarded. Yes, there's going to be setbacks, but just be relentless in that pursuit of learning more and more." – Nathan Kegel 💚 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Do the jargon check Nathan recommends. Before your next presentation to an owner or your boss, figure out who the audience is, list your technical jargon, and rewrite your pitch at their level. This Quarter: Find one place where thickness drives your current spec, such as roof insulation, pipe jacketing or a retrofit with tight clearances. Ask what thin-film or high-performance coating alternatives would do to cost, labor and durability. This Year: Start with the end in mind. Don't ask "What will building design look like in 2030?" Define what you want your projects, team or firm to look like, then work backward and use energy modeling to test the path before you commit. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🧩 Connect with Nathan Kegel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankegel/ Learn more about Nanotech Materials: https://nanotechmaterials.com/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

October 7, 2026Episode 45357 min

From One Building to the Whole Company: Scaling Sustainability to the Boardroom with Marianna Palmour

The Green Impact Report Quick take: LEED used to be the strategy. Now it's one of maybe 20 tools. Marianna Palmour went from reviewing LEED projects to building a corporate ESG program from scratch at a 5,000-person firm, and she explains why your biggest clients' Scope 3 targets are about to become your problem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Marianna Palmour leads corporate sustainability at Salas O'Brien, an engineering and technical services firm with more than 5,000 people. She grew up on Lookout Mountain in northwest Georgia, studied architecture at Georgia Tech, and got into green building early. She took the LEED exam straight out of school and served as vice president and past president of USGBC's Emerging Green Builders. From there she worked at Sustainable Options and then Epstein Group, where she was a LEED third-party reviewer and built out a portfolio and ESG service line. She went back to Georgia Tech for an MBA in entrepreneurship, which made her a "double Jacket." While there she was a fellow with the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainability, focused on inclusive design. When Salas O'Brien acquired Epstein Group, she was asked to build the ESG program from the ground up. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Marianna Palmour shows how sustainability moves from the building to the boardroom: 💡 Key Insight #1: Double materiality beats copying the competition The Challenge: Companies often set sustainability goals by looking at what peers are doing, or by asking only the people at the top. The Solution: Run a materiality assessment that asks every stakeholder: communities, investors, the board, clients and suppliers. Then look at it in both directions ("double materiality"): how sustainability issues affect the business, and how the business affects the environment. ROI: The strategy fits your own values, your regulatory exposure (Local Law 97 in New York, California's ESG disclosure rules) and the people you actually answer to. You don't spend money chasing someone else's priorities. 💡 Key Insight #2: Your clients' Scope 3 is now your compliance problem The Challenge: Smaller firms and service providers assume EU rules and emissions reporting only apply to big multinationals. The Solution: Get ready now. Big global clients have to report Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, so they're pushing supplier codes of conduct and emissions reporting down the supply chain. That includes consultants. Marianna's simple test: Scope 1 is fuel you burn yourself, Scope 2 is energy someone else produces for you, and Scope 3 is everything upstream and downstream. ROI: A $20K job might not get noticed. Millions in work puts you in a client's Scope 3 footprint. Firms that can sign off on supplier standards and report their emissions keep those relationships and stay eligible for the work. 💡 Key Insight #3: Make the business case in two languages The Challenge: Green policies usually get written one building or one office at a time, and leadership sees them as a nice-to-have. The Solution: Early in her career, Marianna took the Georgia-Pacific tower in downtown Atlanta (over a million square feet) through one of the first big LEED EBOM v2009 certifications. It was the first time she had to convince a C-suite that operational changes were right on values and on economics. She now brings that approach to whole portfolios, turning energy, water and indoor air quality strategies into standards that work across cities, countries and regulations. ROI: Policies adopted across the whole organization save money and resources everywhere at once, not just in one showcase building. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "It's amazing what you can do if you are not afraid and you lean on your community." – Marianna Palmour ⬇️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pull the supplier codes of conduct from your top three clients and compare them with your own policies. If you can't attest to them today, find out why. This Quarter: Run a light materiality assessment. Survey employees, key clients, suppliers and leadership about which sustainability issues matter most to them, and look at both sides of double materiality. This Year: Take one strategy that worked on a single building (an energy, water or IEQ policy) and write it up as a standard for your whole portfolio or company. Then start tracking the Scope 3 data your biggest clients will eventually ask for. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🌎 Connect with Marianna Palmour: Website: https://salasobrien.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianna-palmour/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🔋 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧰 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

September 30, 2026Episode 45240 min

Keeping Green Building Simple, Efficient, and Ready for What's Next With Dale Garfield

📝 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The future of high-performance buildings isn't necessarily about adding more technology — it's about making smarter decisions. Mechanical engineering leader Dale Garfield breaks down why fundamentals, heat pumps, renewable-ready infrastructure, and owner-focused design matter as buildings move toward a lower-energy future. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dale Garfield's path to building engineering started somewhere unexpected: the United States Marine Corps. After serving as a combat engineer — including a deployment to Iraq — Dale returned to Wisconsin and began studying civil engineering technology at Mid-State Technical College. An instructor encouraged him to take the next step, eventually leading him to Milwaukee School of Engineering's Architectural Engineering Program. Since graduating, Dale has built a career spanning engineering firms, mechanical contractors, design-build environments, and integrated architecture and engineering. Today, he is a Mechanical Engineering Leader at EUA, where his experience touches projects ranging from K-12 schools and manufacturing facilities to corporate headquarters and shipbuilding facilities. Along the way, Dale also earned an executive MBA to strengthen the business and leadership side of his technical career. His approach to buildings is refreshingly straightforward: understand what matters to the owner, remember the fundamentals, and don't make a system more complicated than it needs to be. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Dale shares a practical engineer's perspective on making buildings more efficient without losing sight of the people who have to own, operate, and maintain them. 📚 Key Insight #1: High-performance design starts with the owner—not the technology. The Challenge: Sustainability can become an exercise in adding technology without first asking what the owner actually wants, needs, or can support. Budgets, operational capabilities, energy goals, and long-term priorities vary significantly from project to project. The Solution: Dale starts with the owner's expectations and builds efficiency into the design from there. That can mean variable frequency drives, condensing boilers, high-efficiency chillers, heat pumps, and other proven strategies — without overengineering the building simply for the sake of complexity. ROI: Owners get efficient systems aligned with their real operational and financial needs. Just as importantly, they get buildings that work and systems their teams can maintain. 🚀MKey Insight #2: Heat pumps can push efficiency forward—but mechanical systems can't get buildings to net zero alone. The Challenge: Engineers can improve heat recovery, heat pumps, chillers, and HVAC performance, but there's a physical limit to how far mechanical efficiency can go. As Dale points out, engineers still have to work within the fundamentals of thermodynamics. The Solution: Combine increasingly efficient mechanical systems with onsite renewable energy. Dale is also seeing projects prepare for the future by designing structural and electrical infrastructure that can support photovoltaic arrays later — even when solar isn't part of the initial construction. ROI: Solar-ready and renewable-ready infrastructure gives owners flexibility. Instead of paying for every sustainability measure on day one, they can create a building capable of adapting as economics, technology, energy priorities, and requirements change. 🧠 Key Insight #3: The best engineering solution is often the simplest one that actually works. The Challenge: Engineers can be tempted to solve problems with increasingly complicated systems. Complexity can create its own problems when owners and facilities teams eventually have to operate, troubleshoot, and maintain those systems. The Solution: Dale returns to a lesson he learned early in his career: keep it simple and remember the fundamentals. He also believes engineers need to stick with problems when they occur instead of distancing themselves when a project gets difficult. ROI: Straightforward, maintainable systems can reduce operational headaches while giving owners something arguably even more valuable: confidence that their engineering team will remain engaged when challenges arise. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "Keep it simple. Remember the fundamentals. You can make these systems as complicated as you want, but at the end of the day, the owner wants something that works, functions and is maintainable." — Dale Garfield 🗓️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Ask what sustainability and energy performance actually mean to the owner before recommending another technology. Start with their priorities, operating realities, and long-term goals. This Quarter: Review an upcoming project for opportunities to improve mechanical efficiency without unnecessary complexity. Look at proven strategies such as heat pumps, heat recovery, variable frequency drives, high-efficiency equipment, and practical controls. This Year: Start designing for what the building may need next—not just what gets installed today. Explore solar-ready structural and electrical infrastructure and other strategies that can create a pathway toward lower-energy or net-zero-capable buildings. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ **Read the transcript: here** 🔗 Connect with Dale Garfield: 🏢 Explore EUA: [https://eua.com/,](https://eua.com/) https://eua.com/eua-people/dale-garfield/ 🌎 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-garfield/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques: Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

September 23, 2026Episode 45153 min

AI, Energy, and Building a More Sustainable Future with Josh Rainbow

🌎 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when AI adoption runs headfirst into energy constraints? Josh Rainbow sees technology, infrastructure, power, and sustainability becoming increasingly interconnected — and believes the winners will be the people who can turn emerging technology into measurable business outcomes. From running an AI-native company with roughly 250 AI agents to bringing global leaders together through Future Summit, Josh offers a fascinating look at where technology, energy, investment, and sustainability are heading next. 🫡 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Josh Rainbow is an entrepreneur, technology leader, investor, and founder of Future Summit, an international platform focused on bringing leaders together to accelerate trade, technology adoption, investment, and meaningful business relationships. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Josh moved to Calgary in his late teens and studied quantitative sciences at the University of Calgary, building a foundation in advanced mathematics, statistics, economics, and computer science before moving into technology. Today, his work spans events and media, AI advisory, venture investing, and global business development. Through Future Summit, Josh and his team work across technology, energy, data centers, infrastructure, finance, and other emerging sectors. His company has also embraced an AI-native operating model, using roughly 250 AI agents across functions including financial reporting, operations, project management, administration, marketing, sales, and research. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Josh Rainbow connects AI, energy, infrastructure, and sustainability — and challenges leaders to think about technology through the lens of real business outcomes: 📚 Key Insight #1: AI can make a business leaner — but automation needs to solve real business problems. The Challenge: Companies can become fascinated with emerging technology without connecting it to revenue, cost reduction, scalability, or another measurable business outcome. Josh learned that traditional businesses don't necessarily care how impressive a technology is — they care what it does for the business. The Solution: Josh's company has become AI-native, deploying roughly 250 AI agents across financial reporting, operations, administration, project management, marketing, sales, funnel research, and other functions. His philosophy is to apply technology directly to business problems rather than adopt it simply because it's new. ROI: Josh says these initiatives helped reduce his company's operating expenses by approximately 4 –50% year over year, allowing that capital to go back into the business while supporting both sustainability and scalability. 🫶 Key Insight #2: The AI revolution is quickly becoming an energy and infrastructure challenge. The Challenge: The next wave of AI requires enormous amounts of compute — and that compute requires reliable power. Josh argues that access to energy is becoming one of the major constraints facing data center and AI expansion. The Solution: Josh is closely watching technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors as potential tools for increasing future energy supply. While he acknowledges that SMRs remain expensive and highly regulated today, he sees the underlying need for abundant energy as critical to supporting continued technology growth. ROI: More reliable and abundant power could help unlock additional data center capacity and AI infrastructure. For businesses, Josh sees energy availability and financing becoming increasingly important factors in determining where and how quickly new compute infrastructure can scale. 💡 Key Insight #3: Technology only matters when it creates measurable business value. The Challenge: Technology conversations often start with the tool: Look at this incredible technology. But established companies aren't necessarily interested in innovation for innovation's sake. The Solution: Start with the business objective. Josh combines his background in technology with experience in sales and business strategy to understand how an organization makes money first — and then determine where technology can solve a meaningful problem. ROI: Connecting technology investment directly to revenue, operating costs, productivity, scalability, or another business objective gives executives a much clearer reason to invest. For sustainability professionals, the same mindset creates a stronger bridge between innovation and the business case needed to get projects approved. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "I believe in paying it forward because that's how I've gotten to this point." — Josh Rainbow 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pick one repetitive task inside your sustainability, engineering, or operations workflow and ask whether AI could reduce the manual work. Start with the business problem — not the AI tool. This Quarter: Quantify the outcome. Track whether your technology initiatives are actually reducing operating expenses, increasing productivity, generating revenue, or creating another measurable benefit. This Year: Look beyond individual building technologies and evaluate the bigger infrastructure picture. Consider how energy availability, data centers, AI, automation, and emerging power technologies could affect your organization's long-term sustainability and technology strategy. Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Josh Rainbow: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarainbow/ Website: https://joshrainbow.com/ Learn more about Future Summit: futuresummit.ai 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧲 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

September 16, 2026Episode 45040 min

Turning Building Data Into Operational Intelligence with Etrit Demaj

💟 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability targets are easy to announce. Making buildings actually perform against them? That's where things get complicated. Etrit Demaj makes the case that the next phase of green building will be powered by real-time operational data, interoperable building systems, and AI — not another static report. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Etrit Demaj is an entrepreneur and co-founder of KodeLabs, a technology company working to make building systems and data easier to integrate, understand, and act on. Etrit immigrated to the United States from Kosovo in 1999 at age 10 and grew up in Rochester Hills, Michigan. After beginning his career at JPMorgan Chase, he moved into entrepreneurship, technology, and real estate. In 2017, Etrit and his team started KodeLabs around a big idea: buildings need an operating layer capable of connecting difficult, fragmented systems while giving owners the flexibility to add new applications and technologies. Today, that mission increasingly intersects with sustainability, decarbonization, real-time data, and AI. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Etrit Demaj challenges Green Building professionals to move sustainability from reporting into operations: 🧲 Key Insight #1: Sustainability needs real-time building data — not another static report. The Challenge: Owners and sustainability teams can set ambitious ESG and decarbonization targets without having a clear, real-time picture of how individual buildings are actually operating. Fragmented systems and inaccessible data make closing that gap difficult. The Solution: Build an operational data layer that connects building systems and makes their information usable across the organization. Etrit argues that sustainability professionals need to move beyond simply producing reports and learn to work with real building data. ROI: Better operational visibility gives teams the ability to track actual outcomes, connect sustainability initiatives to building performance, and demonstrate ROI instead of relying on disconnected reporting exercises. 📚 Key Insight #2: Interoperability is the foundation for smarter — and more sustainable — buildings. The Challenge: Every existing building is different. Some properties contain sophisticated building systems, while others may have only one or two systems worth integrating. That makes portfolio-wide smart-building strategies difficult to scale. The Solution: KodeLabs is building what Etrit describes as an operating system that makes difficult systems easier to integrate in an open way, with additional solutions and applications layered on top. The goal is to meet each building where it is instead of requiring every asset to start from the same technology baseline. ROI: A flexible integration strategy can make it easier to deploy technology across diverse portfolios rather than repeatedly treating every building as an isolated project. It also creates the data foundation needed for future AI and automation applications. ✅ Key Insight #3: The next sustainability leader may look a lot more like an engineer + data strategist. The Challenge: Sustainability has sometimes become disconnected from the day-to-day operation of buildings. Reporting targets alone don't tell teams how equipment is performing or what operational changes will produce measurable results. The Solution: Etrit sees sustainability becoming increasingly operational. Professionals who understand data, technology, engineering, and measurable ROI will be positioned to connect sustainability goals directly to building performance. ROI: Combining sustainability strategy with engineering and operational intelligence can help organizations identify real interventions, validate results, and build a stronger business case for decarbonization investments. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "The buildings that are going to meet their sustainability targets are the ones with a real-time operational layer." — Etrit Demaj 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Identify one sustainability metric you currently report and ask where the underlying building data actually comes from. Is it real-time, accessible, and actionable — or are you still piecing it together manually? This Quarter: Map the major systems and data sources across one building or portfolio. Look for integration gaps that prevent operations, engineering, and sustainability teams from working from the same information. This Year: Develop an operational data strategy that can support sustainability initiatives today while creating a foundation for AI, automation, and smarter building operations tomorrow. 💻 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: Here 🔗 Connect with Etrit Demaj: Website: https://kodelabs.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etrit-demaj-7b2364b/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💟 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

September 9, 2026Episode 44936 min

Building for the Next 100 Years with Timber, Wood Fiber, Already Embedded Carbon with Jonathan Orpin

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if the greenest building innovation isn't waiting around the corner — it's already here? New Energy Works founder Jonathan Orpin makes the case for building better now, using durable timber structures, wood-fiber insulation, off-site construction, and mass timber to tackle carbon without sacrificing craft or economics. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Jonathan Orpin is the founder of New Energy Works, a timber framing and sustainable construction company celebrating 40 years in business. Jonathan's environmental roots stretch back to college, when he became deeply interested in environmentalism. New Energy Works initially explored cellulose insulation and solar energy before pivoting toward timber framing in the mid-1980s. Four decades later, the company works across residential timber framing, off-site panelization, glulam, and mass timber construction. New Energy Works is also 100% employee owned through an ESOP and operates around a triple-bottom-line philosophy of People, Planet, and Profit. Now, Jonathan is preparing for another kind of sustainable design challenge: building a leadership transition that allows the company and its values to thrive beyond its founder. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Jonathan challenges Green Building professionals to stop waiting for the next breakthrough and start scaling solutions we already know work: 🧠 Key Insight #1: Build the enclosure like a blanket — and attack thermal bridging from the outside. The Challenge: Conventional assemblies can introduce thermal bridges through studs and other structural components, while some insulation products carry significant global warming impacts of their own. The Solution: New Energy Works wraps its timber structures with exterior insulation and has increasingly shifted toward wood-fiber insulation. The company uses dense-packed wood fiber in cavities and rigid wood fiber outside the structure to break thermal bridges. Jonathan points to domestically manufactured wood-fiber insulation made from lower-grade trees as an especially exciting evolution. ROI: Better thermal performance can reduce operational energy demand, while wood fiber provides a lower-carbon insulation strategy. Off-site panelization also helps move work into a controlled shop environment, reducing field labor and accelerating installation. 🚀 Key Insight #2: Stop treating mass timber as "next." It's ready now. The Challenge: Concrete and steel remain foundational materials for commercial construction, but Jonathan argues their carbon impacts create an opportunity for lower-carbon structural alternatives. The Solution: New Energy Works is expanding its glulam and mass timber work on commercial projects, bringing wood into structures that might otherwise have relied more heavily on concrete and steel. ROI: Mass timber gives project teams another lever for addressing embodied carbon while creating highly crafted buildings. For Jonathan, the bigger opportunity is implementation: Green Building professionals already know enough to make better material decisions today. 🫶 Key Insight #3: Sustainability includes building companies—and buildings—that can outlast their founders. The Challenge: A durable building means little if the knowledge, culture, and values behind it disappear. Jonathan sees the same longevity challenge in business ownership as he does in construction. The Solution: New Energy Works became 100% employee owned through an ESOP as part of a long-term succession strategy. Jonathan is now preparing to transition from CEO to executive chair while searching for a leader who will preserve the company's commitment to community, craft, and People, Planet, and Profit. His advice to that future CEO is simple: listen, learn, then lead. ROI: Employee ownership creates a pathway for workers to participate in the value they help create while giving the company a succession mechanism designed to preserve its culture and mission. For founders, succession planning can turn decades of work into an organization capable of continuing beyond them. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "My suggestion to the new CEO is, listen, learn and then lead." — Jonathan Orpin 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Review one current wall or roof assembly for thermal bridges and investigate whether wood-fiber insulation or continuous exterior insulation could improve the enclosure. This Quarter: Identify where your project could reduce reliance on higher-carbon structural materials and evaluate timber, glulam, mass timber, and FSC-certified wood where appropriate. This Year: Start measuring instead of assuming. Establish a repeatable process for tracking the carbon impacts of your materials and projects so your sustainability claims can increasingly be backed by data. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Jonathan Orpin: 🌲 Website: https://newenergyworks.com/, https://pioneermillworks.com/ 🌍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-orpin-1017868/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 📚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

September 2, 2026Episode 44858 min

The Father of Green Building Returns: David Gottfried on Regen360 and the Operating System for a Regenerative Earth

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: David Gottfried co-founded USGBC, wrote the first white paper proposing a US rating system, and lit the fuse on what became LEED. Now, 30+ years and 30 billion square feet later, he's back with a bigger question: if we can green every building on Earth and still miss the climate targets, what have we forgotten? 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion David Gottfried is the Founder & CEO of Regen360, where he serves as a strategic advisor to leading organizations across manufacturing, software, and Green Building. He spent the two decades before that running Regenerative Ventures and its RegenNetwork, advising hundreds of organizations on sustainable building strategy. He began his career as a real estate developer and contractor. Gottfried hosts the Regen360 Podcast (80+ episodes) and wrote the bestselling Explosion Green, winner of the Independent Book Awards Grand Prize. His next book, Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth, publishes October 2026. Preorder here. His prior residence was a LEED Platinum home recognized as the highest-rated in the world. He holds a degree in Engineering and Resource Management from Stanford, where he lectures regularly. His honors include WorldGBC's Global Green Building Entrepreneurship Award, USGBC's Leadership Award, the Net Zero Trailblazer Award, and the USGBC Northern California Chapter "Super Hero" Award (now presented in his name). He's a Green Industry Hall of Fame inductee and a Purpose Economy 100 honoree. Outside of the office: he's a father, painter (see his work here), martial artist, fly fisherman, and cyclist, a five-time finisher of the Death Ride. He lives in the East Bay Area of Northern California. But here's what sets this episode apart: David's business card reads "Father of the Green Building Movement," and the title is earned. He co-founded USGBC in 1993 with Mike Italiano and Rick Fedrizzi, having already drafted the first Green Building Standard under his ASTM subcommittee in 1990–91 (the categories that became LEED). He was USGBC's first CEO, funded its early losses himself, and founded a second nonprofit, World Green Building Council, in 2002. Today LEED certification exists in 181 countries and WorldGBC counts 85 Green Building Councils worldwide. If you've built a career around LEED, this is the man who built the room you're standing in. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, David traces the arc from founding a movement to redesigning the operating system underneath it: 🧲 Key Insight #1: You can't scale what you haven't standardized. **The Challenge:**In 1990, "Green Building" wasn't a category: no shared definition, no rating system, and no way for developers to prove sustainable buildings were worth more. **The Solution:**David's ASTM subcommittee drafted the first Green Building Standard in 1990–91. In 1993 he co-founded USGBC with Mike Italiano and Rick Fedrizzi, and USGBC's committee (chaired by Rob Watson and funded with about $800K from the Department of Energy) built the pilot program that became LEED, certifying its first ten projects in 2000. **ROI:**That standard became the foundation for a rating system now used in 181 countries, unlocking an industry David estimates at nearly a trillion dollars globally. 🧲 Key Insight #2: Green Buildings aren't enough if the "ship" underneath them is still sinking. **The Challenge:**Even with LEED's global success, the world is still missing its Paris Agreement targets, warming has already reached roughly 1.5°C, and a billion people still lack potable water or electricity. Decarbonizing buildings alone won't fix civilization's operating system. **The Solution:**David's new book, Regen360, introduces "Earth Codes": 15 principles distilled from over 2,600 pages of dialogue with an AI assistant he calls Zenobia, synthesized into equations for what he calls HOPE: Health On Planet Earth. **ROI:**A framework that pushes sustainability practitioners past compliance checklists and toward systems-level thinking, the shift he calls moving from "human" to "humane." 🧲 Key Insight #3: AI can accelerate burnout culture or accelerate regeneration. The difference is how you use it. **The Challenge:**AI is reshaping every industry, including Green Building's own carbon and energy footprint, and it's just as capable of deepening bad habits as breaking them. **The Solution:**David built a nine-step framework for "AI for good": using AI as a check on decision-making (surfacing a product's full lifecycle assessment or environmental product declaration before you buy) and even as a nervous-system regulator that prompts reflection instead of reaction. **ROI:**Professionals who learn to pair AI fluency with the discipline of asking "what have we forgotten?" position themselves (and their projects) for the next phase of the movement, not just the last one. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "What we did at the USGBC is build the base camp so us mountain climbers can go up the mountain, and not solo without gear. We climb together." — David Gottfried "Are we putting solar panels on the Titanic? It isn't the ship. It's what the ship's floating on. It's the underlying operating system of civilization." — David Gottfried 🚵‍♀️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project (and your career) with these steps: **This Week:**Try David's AI-as-check move on one real decision: before your next product spec, ask your AI assistant for the EPD or full lifecycle assessment and see what turns up. **This Quarter:**Start asking David Brower's question on your own projects: "What have we forgotten?" Use it to audit a current project for gaps beyond the checklist: health, equity, lifecycle impact. **This Year:**Preorder Regen360 and explore how the "Earth Codes" framework could inform your firm's approach to decarbonization, resiliency, and regenerative design beyond LEED compliance. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with David Gottfried: Website:https://regen360.net/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gottfried-75835a2/ 📚 Preorder Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth: Amazon 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💌 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips delivered twice each week. 👉 Subscribe FREE: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.